REFORMING THE ITALIAN PENSION SYSTEM IN THE XXI CENTURY: THE ISSUE OF SENIORITY PENSIONS ONCE AGAIN

2004 ◽  
Vol 07 (02) ◽  
pp. 241-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
PIETRO A. VAGLIASINDI ◽  
MARZIA ROMANELLI ◽  
CARLO BIANCHI

Alternative pension schemes, and early retirement provisions in particular, can produce different effects on retirement behavior, with significant economic consequences. This paper presents new evidence on the effect of different seniority pension reforms, considering the evolution of an agent-based economy in Italy, with heterogeneous workers whose retirement age depends on expected lifetime incomes. Using dynamic aging methods, we examine behavioral changes along proposed pension reform paths. Our model — calibrated to replicate the main demographic and economic features and retirement dynamics of the Italian economy — is used to estimate the age of retirement, total pension expenditures, pension benefits and the trend of inequality and poverty among pensioners under different policy scenarios. More precisely, we compare the current state of affairs (B) with a reform proposed by the Italian Welfare Minister (M) and with an early introduction of a mixed regime for seniority pensions (A) according to two limiting "retirement behavioral rules." Under the individual rationality hypothesis, M produces slightly higher savings with minor redistributive effects; although it leads to an increase in income concentration, M mitigates poverty problems after 2008. The reform is more effective under family-bounded rationality, but it leads to permanent and more significant increases in income concentration and aggravates the diffusion and intensity of poverty.

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-191
Author(s):  
M.A. Bundin

Subject. The paper examines the Russian pension system. Individual pension capital is an alternative direction to the current system of non-State pension funding. Objectives. The author is to consider the embedding of the individual pension capital concept. He also aims at analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the concept. Methods. The study uses the correlation-regression analysis and the analysis of the research information base on the surveyed topic. Results The article allows acknowledging the dependence between the expansion of the incapacitated group of citizens and the consumer price index growth. Besides, it allows to determine the main risks of the proposed concept. Conclusions and Relevance. The main internal risks of the proposed pension reform include: a massive refusal to participate in the new system; the decreasing of participants' contributions tariffs to funds up to 0.1 percent; high-level costs (for funds).


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Samuel R. ◽  
Ajibose K.A.

Consequently, upon many decades of inefficient and corrupt pension management system in Nigeria, public servants in Nigeria dreaded retirement because of the reported plight of retirees who were seen dying on queues or living under the bridges at the Federal Capital City of Abuja. While an average worker in other parts of the world looks forward to a decent and enjoyable post-work life, Nigerians lived in fear of ageing and retirement resulting in several malpractices such as multiple declarations of age with intent to keep them at work far past the official retirement age. Factors arising from pension inadequacies, poor funding, embezzlements and long arrears especially in the public sector led to the initiatives for restructuring of the country’s pension system and the enactment of the Pension Reform Act of 2004 and its review Act of 2014. The reforms aimed at making pension administration more effective, efficient, to make and improve on the question of adequacy and fund security. However, key problems in the management of the new pension system involve the perception of the degree and significance of its impact and whether key objectives are satisfied according to the intent of the reforms. This study was designed to examine whether the reforms have contributed significantly to addressing employees' post-work-life concerns and how such assessments impact their performance. Specifically, the paper examines if a relationship exists between the new pension reform act and employee retention, as well as organizational performance using a sample of employees of Nigerian Distilleries Ltd. Three hypotheses were tested at a 0.05 level of significance, using the inferential statistics of Regression Analysis with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20). The findings show that there is a significant relationship between the New Pension Reform Act and employee’s performance. Also, the New Pension Reform Act has a positive effect on employee retention, compensation design must reflect this option in order to attract, motivate and retain employees. With further evidence that the pension system has the propensity to align the individual and corporate goals by increasing their job commitment, performance and motivation, the paper concludes that proper implementation of the provisions of the pension reform act is a prerequisite for achieving its objectives.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludmyla Laukhina ◽  
◽  
Olena Rabich ◽  
Nadia Kobzar ◽  
Svetlana Scachedub ◽  
...  

In modern conditions, the social policy of the state acquires special significance, which is a set of socio-economic measures of the state, enterprises, organizations, local authorities aimed at protecting the population from unemployment, rising prices, devaluation of labor savings. This is especially important in the Ukrainian reality, as due to the deep economic crisis and the decline in production, the problem of material security of the population, the creation of new jobs has become acute. Social policy follows from the social functions of the state, which it performs in a competitive market mechanism. It has been concluded that the payers of social insurance contributions are the state and employers (enterprises), and employees allegedly do not participate in social insurance and are provided without any deductions (payments) from wages. Social insurance directly and indirectly affects the interests of employees. Therefore, the participation of employees as insurers is mandatory under Ukrainian law. Due to the fact that this process is objective, beyond the control of the individual, is beyond his control, the state, reducing social tensions, takes care of the poor. It has been considered that a serious problem for Ukraine is the reform of the pension system: in fact, it is planned to build 2 new levels of the pension system. Thus, the pension system of Ukraine in the future should look like this: the first level - solidarity - exists today and provides for mandatory payments to the «common pot»; the second level - personalized - also provides for a «common pot», only now the information system of the Pension Fund will store information on the number and amount of individual payments; the third level provides for the emergence of private pension funds and voluntary contributions of working citizens. Bills on pension reform include, in particular, the removal of restrictions on the maximum amount of pension, the restoration of the dependence of the amount of pension on salary and seniority. It has been concluded that the field of social partnership, social policy and social security are those areas that directly affect the living standards of the population and are priority for Ukraine, wich includes the protection of the poor, the fight against unemployment, the regulation of labor relations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Kopasker

Existing research has consistently shown that perceptions of the potential economic consequences of Scottish independence are vital to levels of support for constitutional change. This paper attempts to investigate the mechanism by which expectations of the economic consequences of independence are formed. A hypothesised causal micro-level mechanism is tested that relates constitutional preferences to the existing skill investments of the individual. Evidence is presented that larger skill investments are associated with a greater likelihood of perceiving economic threats from independence. Additionally, greater perceived threat results in lower support for independence. The impact of uncertainty on both positive and negative economic expectations is also examined. While uncertainty has little effect on negative expectations, it significantly reduces the likelihood of those with positive expectations supporting independence. Overall, it appears that a general economy-wide threat is most significant, and it is conjectured that this stems a lack of information on macroeconomic governance credentials.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Markus Knell

Abstract This paper studies how the rates of deduction for early retirement have to be determined in pay-as-you-go (PAYG) systems in order to keep their budget stable. The derivation of these deductions requires the use of a multiperiod intertemporal budget constraint that involves assumptions about the retirement behavior of past, present, and future cohorts. In general, it is not possible to calculate budget-neutral deductions from the budget constraint of a single individual who retires before the target retirement age—an approach that dominates the related literature. Only for specific cases one can use this second approach but then one has to adjust the discount rate to the assumption about collective retirement. If there is only one deviating individual, then the right choice is the market interest rate while for a stationary retirement distribution it is the internal rate of return of the PAYG system. In this case, the necessary deductions are lower than under the standard approach. This is also true for retirement ages that fluctuate randomly around a stationary distribution. Various long-run developments (e.g., increases in life expectancy or permanent changes in the average retirement age) might cause challenges for the sustainability of the pension system. These developments, however, can only be dealt with by adequate adjustments to the basic pension formulas and not by the use of deduction rates.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 469
Author(s):  
Johnny Grandjean Gøgsig Jakobsen

Monasticism was introduced to Denmark in the 11th century. Throughout the following five centuries, around 140 monastic houses (depending on how to count them) were established within the Kingdom of Denmark, the Duchy of Schleswig, the Principality of Rügen and the Duchy of Estonia. These houses represented twelve different monastic orders. While some houses were only short lived and others abandoned more or less voluntarily after some generations, the bulk of monastic institutions within Denmark and its related provinces was dissolved as part of the Lutheran Reformation from 1525 to 1537. This chapter provides an introduction to medieval monasticism in Denmark, Schleswig, Rügen and Estonia through presentations of each of the involved orders and their history within the Danish realm. In addition, two subchapters focus on the early introduction of monasticism to the region as well as on the dissolution at the time of the Reformation. Along with the historical presentations themselves, the main and most recent scholarly works on the individual orders and matters are listed.


2009 ◽  
Vol 137 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 205-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nemanja Damjanov ◽  
Jelena Vojinovic

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and juvenile idiopathic/rheumatoid arthritis (JIA) are chronic, inflammatory, systemic, auto-immune diseases characterized by chronic arthritis leading to progressive joint erosions. The individual functional and social impact of rheumatoid arthritis is of great importance. Disability and joint damage occur rapidly and early in the course of the disease. The remarkably improved outcomes have been achieved initiating biologic therapy with close monitoring of disease progression. Biologic agents are drugs, usually proteins, which can influence chronic immune dysregulation resulting in chronic arthritis. According to the mechanism of action these drugs include: 1) anti-TNF drugs (etanercept, infiximab, adalimumab); 2) IL-1 blocking drugs (anakinra); 3) IL-6 blocking drugs (tocilizumab); 4) agents blocking selective co-stimulation modulation (abatacept); 5) CD 20 blocking drugs (rituximab). Biologics targeting TNF-alpha with methotrexate have revolutionized the treatment of RA, producing significant improvement in clinical, radiographic, and functional outcomes not seen previously. The new concept of rheumatoid arthritis treatment defines early diagnosis, early aggressive therapy with optimal doses of disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and, if no improvement has been achieved during six months, early introduction of biologic drugs. The three-year experience of biologic therapy in Serbia has shown a positive effect on disease outcome.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 265-266
Author(s):  
Caroline Kramer

Abstract. This project deals with the question of what the overall social and economic consequences of dismantling a nuclear power station are for the population and the site. Various disciplines and specialist fields are concerned with questions that touch on the topic of dismantling nuclear technical facilities; however, there are so far no research projects that examined these processes from social scientific, geographic and engineering scientific perspectives. This article concentrates predominantly on the former perspective of the dismantling. Within the framework of this project the affected population and experts from the communities were asked how they deal with the dismantling of the nuclear power stations, which were triggered by the rapid change in energy policy following the accident in Fukushima in 2011. It became clear that there were various strategies for dealing with this process depending on the location. This was the reason to follow up the question of coping with this process at different locations. It could be shown, for example, that the consequences of this event were essentially determined by how the community was already positioned beforehand, e.g. whether the economic situation was a monostructure or whether long-term considerations about the future had already been made during the operating time of the power station. At the individual level, the “prerequisites” in the sense of individual value orientation and the spatially related identity, were also essentially responsible for how the risks of the dismantling and the further development of the community were perceived and evaluated. Furthermore, it was compiled from where the people extracted their information, which sources had a high or low credibility, which worries they have with respect to the near future and whether they have the intention to leave the community. In this project it became clear that there were examples of best practice with respect to dealing with this rapid and fundamental change at the locations.


Author(s):  
Lina Diakovych

Introduction. In order to further move towards the European Economic Area, Ukraine needs to take pension reform measures. Pension provision in Ukraine has to be profoundly reformed in terms of regulatory and legislative framework for calculating pensions in Ukraine. What is of particular importance is improving Ukraine’s laws and methods for calculation and pension payments to citizens. Another important focus of the reform agenda is to define categories of people eligible for old-age pensions, disability pensions, and long- service pensions. Purpose. The purpose of the article is to interpret the regulatory and legislative framework for calculating pensions in Ukraine; to describe changes in pension payments before and after the reform was implemented; to highlight ways of improving pension payments in terms of regulations and legislation. Methods. The research methods used in the article include: analysis; comparison; historical method to consider the legislative framework for calculating pensions at different periods of time. Results. The regulatory and legal framework for calculating pensions in Ukraine is a complex system comprising the Constitution of Ukraine, the Laws of Ukraine, the Labour Code of Ukraine, decrees, Presidential decrees, International agreements and laws of the USSR. Some of these regulations and legislation need to be revised and amended in order to bring them in line with contemporary practices and modern standards. It is claimed that since 2017, Ukraine’s government has been implementing the pension reform aimed at relieving the pressure on the working-age population and improving living standards for retired people. In particular, the retirement age has been raised, eligibility criteria for preferential pensions have been revised, and methods for calculating pensions have been changed. The Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine argues that the new pension reform is expected to enhance social, labour and post-retirement relations, to increase tax revenues through reporting real salaries, to develop a framework of social justice when calculating pensions. The author points out that the regulatory and legislative framework for calculating pensions is outdated at this stage and it requires changes. The considered changes are as follows: the establishment of a working group for entitlement of preferential pensions; the introduction of wage differentials by industries and occupations; the increase of pensions in line with inflation and age; the implementation of notional defined contribution pension system; the introduction of the new Labour Code and Pension Code, which are expected to regulate labour and post-retirement relations and meet modern standards. It is also indicated that continued employment should be enforced by legislation and a system of granting advantages and social security benefits to those who retire later needs to be developed. In terms of legislation, sufficient regard should be given to non-state pension schemes, defined contribution pension systems, and the principle of fairness when it comes to pension entitlements. It is also crucial to adjust pension amounts and retirement age to align with the sustainability ratio and the average life expectancy. Discussion. Further research of regulatory and legal framework for calculating pensions in Ukraine should be focused on the development of the Pension Code and improvement of the existing laws relative to pension calculation and payment. The author also suggests differentiating minimum wages by industries and regions and countering the illicit labour market and campaigning against payments ‘in envelope’, because official wages are the basis for calculating pensions.


Author(s):  
T. Kravchenko ◽  
◽  
O. Moroz ◽  

The state, stages of formation and problems of the pension system of Ukraine are considered. The main directions of pension reform are identified, taking into account the experience of Poland. The attitude of citizens to the current state and readiness for changes in the pension system of Ukraine is analyzed. The survey showed that the respondents are ready and support the reform of the Ukrainian pension system and the introduction of the accumulative component, but there is a big problem in the form of distrust of private pension funds and private insurance companies. It is determined that the pension system is no longer able to withstand the load and requires changes in the near future. Analysis of the pension system has shown that it has always been formed taking into account only short-term objectives, which makes it ineffective in strategic terms. It is substantiated that without the growth of the welfare of the population, the de-shadowing of the labor market and the introduction of accumulative pension insurance, the financial condition of the Ukrainian solidarity pension system will deteriorate every year. However, along with the expected positive effect of the introduction of the accumulative component in Ukraine, there are also risks, as fluctuations and instability of the domestic economy may lead to deterioration of the banking sector and insurance companies, which will reduce investment returns in the system or even partial loss of pension savings. Two development scenarios (pessimistic and optimistic) for the pension system of Poland and Ukraine are analyzed. It is determined that for the successful reform of the old solidarity system of Ukraine into a cumulative one it is necessary to: ensure sustainable GDP growth; create a centralized information system for collecting contributions; to personify and register all insured persons in the Pension Fund; identify the needs for qualified personnel, equipment and funds needed to meet the requirements of the new system; provide absolutely all conditions for the effective implementation of the private pension system.


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